Knowing that there are over 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone…and scientists believe half of those have planets…
When space travel becomes accessible to everyone, assuming there are other suitable planets for good living (seems pretty reasonable), could this allow everyone the opportunity to “opt out” of governments?
How can governments continue if enough people leave and don’t pay them any resources?
Not necessarily. When (if) people begin travelling the stars, their notions of governance will follow. In otherwords, you can’t run from your problems because they follow you and eventually catch-up. The trick isn’t to ‘escape’ government, but how to understand it so that you can either fix it or know how to replace it.
And governments don’t need people to pay them sufficient resources - they can just borrow and print money!
actually escaping to frontier lands was a common way to avoid the state and only in recent history has this become close to impossible. I would think seasteading would come before spacesteading though.
Right, people escaped to the frontier and then the state eventually caught right up. Escaping to a seasteading for the sake of a new frontier can become just another cycle of the same process. I don’t have a problem with leaving a statist-controlled territory for the frontier, but that’s solves only half the problem. Ultimately, if sufficient people were willing to abolish the state, then it would render the need for a new frontier obsolete (except for the people who now wanted to create a new statist society!)
Not necessarily. When (if) people begin travelling the stars, their notions of governance will follow. In otherwords, you can’t run from your problems because they follow you and eventually catch-up. The trick isn’t to ‘escape’ government, but how to understand it so that you can either fix it or know how to replace it.
And governments don’t need people to pay them sufficient resources - they can just borrow and print money!
Government-issued currency, as it is on Earth is only valuable because people perceive it to be. Thus, in order for the government to have power outside of Earth all non-Earth dwellers would have to perceive the government’s currency valuable. If people started trading in their own competing currencies which actually carried value and didn’t trade with government-issued currency the government will have a hard time staying funded outside of earth. But I do agree that you can’t just run away from the government as it will try its best to stay solvent outside of Earth. A better system needs to be recognized and adopted that would out-compete the old government and hopefully that would fizzle it out of existence.
The colonists will establish their own government out in the space colonies unless they know how not to.
There is no escape. The struggle is here on Earth.
Watch Star Trek. Freedom ain’t on the agenda.
Watch Firefly. Freedom is on the agenda, which is also probably why it was cancelled before the first season even finished airing. Can’t give the masses the wrong ideas - they might start becoming difficult.
The emergnce of governance is in human nature. So whatever opting out there will be, a government will fill the void.
I’m not sure Firefly makes the case for freedom.
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Not necessarily. When (if) people begin travelling the stars, their notions of governance will follow. In otherwords, you can’t run from your problems because they follow you and eventually catch-up. The trick isn’t to ‘escape’ government, but how to understand it so that you can either fix it or know how to replace it.
And governments don’t need people to pay them sufficient resources - they can just borrow and print money!"
The Wild West allowed many to escape the bonds of government. If not forever, at least for a time.
Space is much different. Its a heck of alot bigger. When space travel is super accessible to everyone, people will leave…and no government will have the resources to find them or want to find them. Space is too big. In fact, its probably indefinetely big and goes on forever.
As more and more people leave and find other places that are suitable for living…the government will dry up. It will crumble much earlier than the time it takes for everyone to opt out.
The ony thing is…where there is freedom…as in the open seas and the wild west…there were bandits/pirates.
Was that you who posted those lyrics from the show’s theme song a while back? I really liked them. I had them in my head for like a week.
The only way to get away from the government is here. And even then you might get all sorts of eaten up by a smoke monster.
Exactly! Freedom is where you make it. Space would be a new start. Similar to what explorers experienced during the past few hundred years. With the lessons learned from the mistakes of governement, would it be so hard to envision an Austrian-style society forming somewhere other than the confines of Earth?
I’m not too optimistic about this. The State has been pretty adamant about maintaining a monopoly on space travel thus far.
the only way to have a free market society in space is if we already have one here on Earth. Do you really think government is just going to let you leave this Earth peacefully?? of course not, therefore, we would need to have had a free society on Earth before we even think about having one in space…
Yeah - it’s a catchy tune!
Pretty epic. Is that from a novel or tv series? I especially liked the par 3, 2 hole golf course. Wonder what they’d use for equipment …
The markets can take care of that (Ghostbusters, anyone?)
Indeed - but if people can get there, others will be sure to follow! Don’t assume that just because people might leave to other suitable worlds / locations, that the government which they may or may not be fleeing from won’t follow - particularly if there’s an incentive to do so. A lot of the popular insurrections in sci-fi have a lot to do with that subject. For example, it’s big in the pre-Halo universe. Colonists tried creating societies independent of the UNSC and various Earth governments w/in the Solar System and the UNSC basically crushed the “uprisings.” The, when faster-than-light travel was invented, the same exact thing happened within various star systems.
I will be difficult and argue that yes, where there is freedom, people can use the freedom to do bad things. But don’t forget that there’s no difference between a bandit that demands your money at the point of a gun, and a bureaucrat with a fancy badge who demands the same, more or less also at the point of the gun! In the latter case, you might not have as much (or any) freedom, but you still have to deal with the bandits!
